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In the April 2009 US WAR newsletter we get a mention in the sidebar. That’s always a nice shout-out, but still leaves me with a bit of a feeling Mythic are a little out-of-date with some of their fan/community info. Here’s the quotation that actually made me laugh out loud:

“arbitrary, Hawley, and Spinks, three lovely MMO-playin’ ladies”

I’d like to state for the record, that although lovely, Hawley is VERY MUCH a man!

The rest of the newsletter makes really interesting reading though, from podcasts on Land of the Dead, Live Event details for the Beyond the Sands and Rise of the Tomb Kings events, Dungeon details for the Necropolis, and new mounts!!!!!!!

Ok, so the pictures of the new mounts made me a little jealous and giddy, they look amazing (manticore and griffin). But reality soon set in, it’s for the recruit-a-friend programme, which we don’t have in the EU. And you need to recruit 6 subscribers. That’s a hell of a lot. A little bit too much to just fake and buy for yourself, even if you were crazy enough to do so.

Both the EU and US newsletters also have a list of events that the WAR team will be coming to in the coming year, so they’re definitely worth checking out from that angle. The EU team will be at Dreamhack, Cologne Games Day and GameCon, UK Games Day, Paris Festival de Jeu and Poznan Arena Pl.

We’ll be at the London get-together on 9th May from 4pm onwards at the Cittie of York pub in Holborn. If you can make it, pop in and say hi. While Hawley won’t be there since he can’t make it, but at least me and Spinks will be there to show off our authentic female-ness!

Paul Barnett and Jeff Hickman, along with ‘an entire pack of Warhammer Online bigwigs’ spoke to Eurogamer yesterday in a live chat, where they gave snippets of information about the game events, the Land of the Dead, the new classes, and future plans for the game. I’ve copied and pasted some of the bits I found most interesting, but good ol’ Eurogamer has put the entire transcript up, so you can go read it in its entirety.

Tomb Kings or The Land of the Dead is a massive zone which is broken up into two parts – The Necropolis and the Tomb of the Vulture Lord.

It is RvR-gated. In other words, each realm must fight for ownership and the dungeon is expected to change hands nightly…

It is full of new and interesting PQs, new lairs, refreshing game mechanics, new rewards and loot and generally awesome new stuff.

Many of the great things from Darkness Falls will be built upon. Tokens, other loot methods, wide level range, and the thrill of your enemy always breathing down your back.

It is accessible from around levels 25 and up. The Tomb of the Vulture Lord is actually a super high level area designed to supplement our end game content after Lost Vale.

So we are working on multiple events as part of the Call to Arms campaign, two of which specifically revolve around eluding to or gaining access to The Land of the Dead.

What you are specifically referring to is our race for access, the main plotline behind the Rise of the Tomb Kings (Live event #3). This event represents a race to first access (limited time exclusive access) to the dungeon. This will be an Order vs. Destruction race for superiority.

CC is definitely something we talk about almost on a daily basis. We will continue to talk and then tweak the abilities to get as close to perfect as we ever can.

Let’s start with a bit of background. Spinks and I were pretty avid tabletop roleplayers growing up and through to today when we can get a group of like-minded individuals together. But we’ve never played Warhammer. Games Workshop, miniatures and the cost of starting up always seemed a little intimidating and we were happy with the games we played.

Fast forward to yesterday. We’ve been discussing between ourselves checking out Games Day in the UK in September as it’s held between where we both live and it’d help us get a fairly intense insight into the game, how it all works, the varieties it comes in and just how popular it is. Plus, looks like Warhammer Online will be represented there too*, which is an added bonus. We thought we’d write a series of articles for others who might be coming to Warhammer Online without knowing all that much about the mechanics of Warhammer – ie, our personal experiences might inform others out there.

So with that in mind I headed into the Games Workshop, steeled myself and went in to speak to them. Why steel myself? Well, despite meeting a woman around my age who played Warhammer just last week, I still kind of have the feeling that it’s generally aimed at a different demographic and I’ve always felt a little intimidated when I’ve popped into the shops before. This time though, it was totally non-intimidating and the guy I spoke to was lovely and gave me all the info I needed. So here’s the deal for anyone thinking of going:

Games Workshop Games Day 2008 is being held at the NEC in Birmingham on September 14th. It’s 10am-4am, but 10am is when the doors open for non-Golden Demon participants (that’s the miniature painting comp – I have some details about that if people want to hear about them). If you subscribe to White Dwarf you can go buy a ticket now, if you don’t you need to wait till 28th June.

At that point you go to your local Games Workshop (or any actually ;p) and you can grab a ticket for £30. Shops also arrange coaches to and from the event on the day, which costs extra but given sunday trains is worth considering! But coach tickets are more limited than Games Day ones, so if you’ll need that, get to the shop early on 28th (and check opening times, I ended up wasting half an hour in town because I hadn’t!). We both ended up speaking to our local stores and were both really happy to find it such an easy and friendly experience. My only criticism of Games Workshop in relation to Games Day was the difficulty in finding this info out online (something I hope to help rectify!) ;p

Apparently there are a ton of tickets this year because they’ve gone for bigger numbers and taken more space at the NEC. There’s also plenty of parking at the NEC if you want to make your own way there.

It sounds like it’ll be lots of fun and really informative (for us). If anyone wants to meet up while there, we’ll put something up nearer the time and maybe UK-ers into Warhammer Online can have a little meeting – who knows!

*Josh Drescher says as much on the comments to his blog here, plus I spoke to Games Day Manager Brian Aderson and he said as much too (thanks to my local Games Workshop shop for suggesting I ring him and providing name and phone number!). Also Mythic have it listed in their Event Calendar.